Description
Book SynopsisGeorge McClure offers here a far-reaching analysis of the role of consolation in Italian Renaissance culture, showing how the humanists' interest in despair, and their effort to open up this realm in both social and personal terms, signaled a shift toward a heightened secularization in European thought. Analyzing works by fourteenth-and fifteenth-c
Trade ReviewWinner of the 1992 Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize, Society for Italian Historical Studies "George W. McClure has written an excellent survey of writings on sorrow and consolation in Italian Renaissance humanism."--American Historical Review
Table of Contents*FrontMatter, pg. i*CONTENTS, pg. vii*PREFACE, pg. ix*ABBREVIATIONS, pg. xi*INTRODUCTION. THE CLASSICAL AND CHRISTIAN TRADITIONS, pg. 3*CHAPTER 1. Petrarch as Self-Consoler: The Secretum, pg. 18*CHAPTER 2. Petrarch as Public Consoler: The Letters, pg. 30*CHAPTER 3. Petrarch as Universal Consoler: The De remediis utriusque fortune, pg. 46*CHAPTER 4. Consolation and Community: Coluccio Salutati as Friend and Comforter, pg. 73*CHAPTER 5. The Art of Mourning: Autobiographical Writings on the Loss of a Son, pg. 93*CHAPTER 6. The Science of Consoling: A Litde-Known Clerical Manual of Consolation, pg. 116*CHAPTER 7. Grief and Melancholy in Medicean Florence: Marsilio Ficino and the Platonic Regimen, pg. 132*CONCLUSION. The Italian Renaissance and Beyond, pg. 155*NOTES, pg. 167*SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY, pg. 287*INDEX, pg. 301
